Ghost Story Essay

Ghost Stories are really popular, and always have been for a very long time. Several reasons why ghost based novels and movies have been successful, is because many people like the thrill. People will pick up a novel or enter a cinema without knowing how you will fell after, kind of in a way†¦ similar to rollercoaster’s and why people go on them. People are just waiting for a break of normal day-to-day life and are craving some excitement. Nearly all ghost stories keep you suspended until the last moment, can’t wait to turn that hand and read the next page. This keeps the reader at there nerves, but still wanting to read the rest of the book, and finish it, then buy another, then do the exact same. People who sat that they have seen a ghost, just puts other people in a fixed mind set thinking how you would feel during a encounter with a ghost, how you would feel afterwards, would you tell anyone. People often say you get Goosebumps and go cold, and every noise you hear – you think someone is there, the fear factor is there. There is a number of factors to contribute to a good ghost story, a few of them are; Vocabulary – When the writer gives a good detailed account of what people are wearing, how the setting is, how the weather (is there pathetic fallacy? ). It will give the reader a better understanding of what’s actually going on and so they can then picture it in your head. Unpredictability – Twist’s in the story line, things to keep the reader asking questions after each page, and being answered at the end of the novel, twist’s that aren’t answered, sort of cliff hangers. Suspense and Development of Tension – this is a key factor because it’s mainly suspense and tension that the reader finds intriguing and what makes them turn the page. Being, again descriptive, going into every sentence as the reader was in the story not knowing anything. Build up of tension; writer would want the reader to feel agitated in specific parts, taking slow steps to describe things, keeping audience at the â€Å"edge of there seat†, and similarly the writer needs to develop the tension through his writing. There are Hundreds of Ghost Stories, old, modern, Traditional. The two Stories I am going to compare is â€Å"The Call†, and â€Å"The Old Nurse’s Story†, there are a few similarities, some of them are; The Ghost’s – In both stories, the ghosts are both lonely and seeking companionship, and they both got companionship in the end by taking over there victims. From The Call – â€Å"What the hell am I doing here? â€Å", Asked Meg, as if waking from a dream†. Meg was taken into a trance by the ghost, in this case by a telephone call. The ghost was pretending someone was down the River. â€Å"The Shepherds†¦ found Miss Maude sitting, all crazy and smiling, nursing a dead child†, – The child of Miss Maude taunts her mother. They take over venerable people, this is a way they trance there victims, after taking over victims, they take them away from there loved ones and family and follow orders from the ghost. This is effective because it adds a twist to the story, taking control over a special or loved person†¦ usually in some ghost stories they tend to take over total strangers and work from there, putting them into a trance and giving specific orders, Out of the ordinary. In â€Å"The Call†, the ghost died by her husband throwing her into the river. He threw her into the river because she had a bad leg and was no use to him. He wanted to see other women. In â€Å"The Old Nurses Story†, Lord Furnival wanted his wanted his daughter to marry a person of importance and wealth and to bring happiness into the house. She and her sister had started to take music lessons from a non-profitable tuition from Italy. They both fancied the tutor, but Mrs Maude decides that she wants more than that†¦ she loved him and wanted to marry him. The only thing that was stopping her was her father, Lord Furnival. The tutor is exactly the person he doesn’t want her daughter to marry. This is effective to the audience because the audience thinks there will be a standard ghostly plot, but this is different. This adds to the depth of the plot, it all based around the family and makes the reader want to know more, it is intriguing to the reader. †¦ Both of the victims are powerless against the ghosts. In â€Å"The Call†, the women with the dog, takes control of the wife working in the Samaritans Office. The husband and wife don’t do anything to stop the ghost; Harry just died and made the ghost go away. When the victims were put into a trance, they don’t want to fight it, rescue themselves†¦ in fact they want to be with the ghost more than their loved ones. This maybe the fact that the ghost just totally overwhelms them and takes 100% control over them. Meg went into a trance and didn’t come to tell her husband, that she was going to the river late at night. The women in both stories fall under the spell of the ghost. It was late at night and the phone rang. Meg answered it and it was a bit spooky because of the time and nature of the call; there was a mad woman on the phone and was saying that her husband’s going to kill her. The next couple of phone calls were getting Meg weirder and weirder. She snapped. She didn’t know what she was doing under the ghostly trance and she went to the river, towards the woman and dog. Both of the stories are set in very cold, bleak places, these give a kind of goolish, brutal and sick feeling. Most ghost stories are not set in cold, bleak places†¦ most likely an urban area. This is different. Both situated far from nothing with huge houses and massive land, Wealthy people. The coldness gives a sense of evil and dangerous. Pathetic fallacy is used to reflect the power of the weather, like when they are tranced, and taken over, the weather changes, gets colder, darker and mood and atmosphere changes. Something that was mentioned in the Introduction, about making a ‘good’ ghost story, was language. The language that both stories use a very descriptive language; so the reader knows/can imagine everything in there mind, â€Å"The bank is crumbling and the fence is rotting. â€Å", â€Å"The water stacked up, black smooth slightly steaming†¦ â€Å", â€Å"the stillness of the dead-cold weather†. Both writers use similes, metaphors and personification. â€Å"The Old Nurses Story† use’s old vocabulary, long sentences; this is more found of traditional old ghost stories. As for â€Å"The Call†, it uses simple vocabulary, not complicated to follow story line and modern with straight forward sentences.

Anthropology-African Religions

The roots of modern day Islam were sown a couple of centuries ago when the once proud Muslim empire began to be overwhelmed by expansionist movements dominated by European colonialists.This has led to a cultural turmoil in Muslim world who once used to live at the pinnacle of glory saw its silent burial with the meek subjugation of the Islamic Caliphate at the hands of mighty British army in early twentieth century. While a sizable section of the Muslims chose to follow the path shown by great statesman like Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, many continued to be festered by the wounds of humiliation.Now Muslims in many countries are looking to reassert themselves after a long period of humiliation and oppression, sometimes at the hands of foreigners and sometimes at the hands of their own leaders. Contrary to popular belief, Muslims are not a monolithic group, nor there is any centralized authority within Islam.The Islamic civilization from its birth has gone through debates and counter debates . Except for the Shahadah (God is one and Mohammad is his messenger) and the five mandatory duties (Hajj, Zakat, Roza, Namaz and Shahadah) everything else in Islam has been subjected to deep scrutiny and analysis with the result that many schools of thoughts kept appearing and disappearing.That is why contradictions are evident to people both inside and outside the Muslim community. The orientalists, the conventional authorities on Islam, have been accused of being essentialist and insensitive to the change, negotiation, development, and diversity that characterizes lived Islam.Some scholars, primarily anthropologists, have responded to the tendency to essentialize by giving up the idea of conceptualizing one â€Å"Islam† and instead have focused their inquiry on what they call various â€Å"local Islams.† Others have focused on sociological or political-economic approaches in explaining the modern forms of political and social activism among Muslims to the exclusion o f â€Å"scriptural† Islam from their analysis. (Anjum O., 2007)Islam was brought to Sub-Saharan Africa in the first place via the trade routes from the Arab countries and North Africa. The African Muslims have always maintained quite close links with the Arab world, from which a number of reformers came.But Islamisation was essentially carried out by Africans themselves, who shared the same life, spoke the same language, lived in the same cultural world entirely. There is no doubt that, for African Muslims,  «Africanicity » and Islam are in no way opposed. For them Islam is not an imported religion.For many, abandoning the Muslim religion is equivalent to the rejection of all their family and tribal traditions, so intermingled are the two socio-religious universes. One must conclude that Islam, in its traditional African form, is entirely a part of the African cultural heritage and thus an African reality. The long cohabitation of Islam with traditional African religion h as also had an effect at the cultural level.The African languages are in general languages with a concrete vocabulary, rather limited in the expression of more abstract realities or more developed reflections. With the Arabic language Islam has been able to fill a gap. Many African peoples, some scarcely touched by Islam, have borrowed a complete abstract, and especially religious, vocabulary from Arabic, with no more than the changes proper to the structure of each language.The relative success of Islam may be related to its compatibility with many aspects of African culture–for example, plural marriage for men, which was opposed by Christian missionaries. Nonetheless, Islam was also embraced because it provided symbolic identification with successful traders and travelers throughout the world, and it was seen as an alternative to European religion.Its agents were black, and it preached on behalf of those who lacked the trappings of Western civilization. These adaptations of local practices by the Islamists is not only unique in Cà ´te d'Ivoire, it has happened world over and plays an important role in shaping the thoughts and mind processes of the Muslims.

Blood Brothers Essay Example for Free (#7)

Blood Brothers Essay In the three plays I have read by Willy Russell, all of them are linked by the fact that they all contain an aspect of social inequality. Russell uses humour in all these plays to show serious messages, mostly through stereotypes. In every play there are two very contrasting social groups, each figure-headed by certain characters in the stories. For example, in Blood Brothers, Mickey figureheads the working class society like Rita does in Educating Rita, and the children do in Our Day Out. Whereas Eddie figureheads the middle class society in Blood Brothers, Frank does in Educating Rita, and Mr. Briggs does in Our Day Out. We found that the people from the working class backgrounds were all very broad scoucers, who tended to use slang words such as â€Å"ciggie† and â€Å"chippie. † They were what you would call a very typical stereotype of a broad liverpudlian. Most of them had problems aswell. For instance, Mickey in â€Å"Blood Brothers† has family problems because he has many older siblings which means he gets a lot of hand-me-down clothes and gets bullied by his older brother Sammy who breaks his toys. Rita in â€Å"Educating Rita† has many conflicts with her husband Denny who doesn’t want her to carry on with her tuition from Frank. She wants to be educated so that she can have choices. As the play progresses and Rita becomes more educated she begins to make her own decisions, she moves out of her house, ends her relationship with Denny and says â€Å"I might even have a baby† The people from the middle class backgrounds however were made to look rather different. Eddie in â€Å"Blood Brothers† doesn’t have to share his toys with brothers or sisters like Mickey does, and his mother doesn’t have to worry about financial problems because they have quite a lot of money. The men that were from the middle class backgrounds (Mr. Briggs and Frank) both wore suits and seemed to be well educated, living a comfortable lifestyle. This society of people in the stories tended to speak more formally using words such as â€Å"What in the world is being off one’s cake? † Eddie is brought up to speak correctly and not use colloquialisms. In â€Å"Blood Brothers† Micky asks him what a dictionary is and Eddie replies â€Å"It is a book which tells you the meaning of words. † I think Russell makes the social classes seem so very different to one another in each play, so that when they come together there is a lot of humour, but also a lot of tension between them because neither social class really understand each other. This forms a rich and poor type of scenario for all three plays. In â€Å"Educating Rita† Frank is a rich lecturer and Rita is a poor university student who has bad problems with her husband at home. In â€Å"Our Day Out† there is a similar contrast between Mr. Briggs the, well-spoken teacher, and the children who come from a poor, run-down area. These rich and poor scenarios are serious messages that Russell conveys in all three plays. Interestingly enough though, it is the people from the middle class backgrounds that turn out to be the most strange of the two societies. Frank in Educating Rita has a drink addiction, yet has a comfortable lifestyle and is on a stable income. Mr. Briggs doesn’t like the children at the school where he works because they are less fortunate than himself, he says â€Å"most of them were rejects on the day they were born. † Eddie’s adopted mother in Blood Brothers, Mrs. Lyons, is supersticious and unhappy. Quote: â€Å"The shoes! The shoes! On the table! Get them off! Get them off! † Frank and Mr. Briggs are in many ways the same, they both wear suits and dress smartly, they both have similar lifestyles and they both have some sort of problem (i. e. the drink and the hatred for people less fortunate than him). This is where I think that Blood Brothers is different, it doesn’t contain a male character as old as Frank or Mr. Briggs who appears often in the story. Whereas the conversations between adult and youth in the other stories are mainly comical, like in Our Day Out when the two lads are caught smoking at the back of the bus, in Blood Brothers they are more intense. I think Blood Brothers on the whole is more intense. In Blood Brothers Russell uses a narrator drifting in and out of the play at certain times, saying daunting things about the scene that has just happened, or is going to happen. I believe this represents the devil and is a good way of creating an eerie tension, because he moves to different places on the stage in the play, and you never see his whole face or body, he is always in the shadows. There are no narrators in the two other plays but dramatic devices also take on the form of dramatic irony. In â€Å"Blood Brothers† this is shown by the two twins not knowing they are twins, when they first become friends. Later in the story when they find out they were born on the same day â€Å"That means we can be blood brothers† the audience can see what is happening, they are going to eventually find out that they are real brothers, and there will be a big disaster because of this. â€Å"Our Day Out† shows dramatic irony when the bus driver is told the children can’t afford sweets or lemonade â€Å"lemonade never touches their lips† but when the driver turns around they all are munching on chocolate bars! Later on their journey the bus stops at a sweet shop and the audience sees the shopkeepers talking about raising the prices of the goods in their shop â€Å"Can I help inflation? † The audience now know that the shopkeepers are going to raise their prices, but the children don’t. The children get their revenge for being ‘ripped off’. They all squeeze into the shop and each time the shopkeepers turn their backs to collect more sweets from the shelves, the kids pocket anything in front of them. The two shopkeepers are oblivious to the stealing taking place until the coach leaves and they realise no money from the till has changed hands â€Å"Thievin’ little bastards! † shouts one of the shopkeepers. Russell also uses the influence of song in â€Å"Blood Brothers† and â€Å"Our Day Out† to show the mood and feelings of the characters as the play progresses. At the beginning of â€Å"Blood Brothers† Mrs. Johnston is seen dancing in a pub singing a song with the lines â€Å"Oh we went dancing. † in the chorus. As the play continues she occasionally sings this line but at a tempo which reflects the mood of the play itself. In â€Å"Our Day Out† the songs are cheerful and uplifting â€Å"We’re off, we’re off, we’re off in a motor car. † The themes of the three plays are all linked in many ways. As I have said before, social inequality connects all three, another is the fact they are all set in and around Liverpool with some of the characters in each play speaking with a very broad Liverpudlian accent. Finally, the last one is that they all contain an aspect concerning death. I. e. In Blood Brothers, Mickey and Eddie, in Educating Rita, Rita’s flatmate tries to commit suicide, and in Our Day Out one of the pupils called Carol also attempts to kill herself â€Å"Try an’ get me an’ I’ll jump over. † I believe that Willy Russell features the aspects of social inequality, hatred, death, abuse, love, irony and humour in each play because he knows they have a hard-hitting impact on the audience. Also I think it is because at some time in his life he has been affected significantly by them and so, involves them in something which he can express his feelings and emotions at. Writing. Blood Brothers. (2017, Sep 23).

Business Environment of Tombow Pencil Company Essay

Business Environment of Tombow Pencil Company - Essay Example The firm that is analyzed in the paper is Tombow Pencil Company Ltd is based in Japan and is headquartered in Tokyo. The company was well known throughout Japan for its products that were carefully designed to win the market share as well as to improve the profit margins. Whilst business has been steadily growing, it can be noted that the changing environment has somehow affected the operations of Tombow. The strategy implemented by the organisation could not be fully sustained in the long run and this has prompted the leadership to seek changes in the structure of the organisation as well as its operations. The business environment in which organizations operate during the contemporary period is characterised by changes such as technological innovations, competition as well as the ever-changing needs of the consumers. In the given case of Tombow, it can be seen that its operations have been adversely affected by changes in the environment such as competition as well as improvements in the distribution channels of different pencil products offered. Such changes in the business environment have affected Tombow in different ways but the major notable effect is that of declining profits that can be attributed to these changes taking place in the business environment. As such, Roussow (1) posits to the effect that the organisation’s success in this competitive and dynamic environment mainly depends on its capacity to develop, implement, monitor as well as evaluate its business strategy such as knowledge management. The main problem bedevilling Tombow Company Ltd is related to several functional departments. There are many players involved in the supply chain where sales agents as well as wholesalers have been used in the distribution process. The other problem is related to innovations in the distribution channels that have challenged traditional ways of doing business by this organisation. This has resulted in late deliveries of the products. This has also led to piling of different products pending delivery and meeting the expectations of the customers is still a challenge for this particular company owing to changes taking place in the business environment where it is operating. Whilst it can be seen that there are many players involved in the production as well as distribution process, it seems that there is lack of adequate networking among the players involved. Dyer & Nobeoka (2) suggest that networking between the production as well as supply chain of the organisation is very important in as far as knowledge creation is concerned. These authors suggest that learning in an organisation is very important for its success and it can only be achieved through networking of vital organs, which can promote institutionalisation, as well as flow of knowledge within it. A good example can be drawn from the automobile industry especially the case of Toyota which achieved its competitive advantage through networking its production as well as supply chain which promoted sharing of knowledge among vital stakeholders involved in its operations. Basically, learning in an organisation which promotes the creation as well as sharing of knowledge is often seen as the locus for organisational development especially in the ever changing business environment in which organisations operate. Bilateral knowledge sharing between the organisation and its suppliers is very important given that there will be high chances of achieving the goal of the organisation since mutual understanding among the vital networks would be promoted. Continuous learning as well as knowledge creation and sharing are seen as very important components that can lead an organisation to gain a competitive advantage over its rival competitors. The network system is very effective in transferring knowledge from one point to the other within an organisation, which is essential for its long term growth and development. Any organization that is concerned about its g rowth ought to harness on the strategy of organisational learning. Over and above, it can be noted that organizations operate in a

Organization Culture Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Organization Culture - Essay Example The culture of a utility organization is reasonably well suited to forms of regulated monopoly. The maintenance of consistent performance in a utility organization is more important than continued innovation, because any mistakes in any organization's innovation process can be very costly. The culture of a software organization is reasonably well suited to its contextual and environmental realities. It is vital for a software firm to develop continuously, and strive for consistent innovation by utilizing the skills and creativity of its employees to a maximum. It is misguided to try to find a one-size-fits-all cultural profile for an organization's internal and external realities. The popular assumption that an ideal culture can be found by carefully examining the is a misguided one, and "it is not clear that any particular culture will be effective for any specific organization at a particular point in time" Greene, R. J. It is imperative that respondents to the survey understand that there are no standard or superior answers, and that "the critical goal is to ensure that an appropriate balance of viewpoints is arrived at" Greene, R. J. In order to promote a focus on customer satisfaction, it might be necessary to hire professionals who have had experience in organizations where the survival of the organization is dependent on customer satisfaction. In software organizations, managers shou... J. In order to promote a focus on customer satisfaction, it might be necessary to hire professionals who have had experience in organizations where the survival of the organization is dependent on customer satisfaction. In software organizations, managers should be encouraged to have a broader perspective, and incentives could be developed to increase recognition of the importance of support functions in the overall success of the firm. Management critique The definition and evaluation of an organization's culture can used to ensure that human resource strategies employed by an organization, are compatible with its common shared basic beliefs and assumptions. This involves conducting a survey to ascertain from the parties involved, the level of compatibility with the existing culture, and ensuring that their actual values or voices are represented in the survey questionnaire. In software organizations, the culture should be defined with a lot of flexibility, with staff roles that are temporary and can be frequently changed, so as to allow for success in a wide variety of future endeavors. References. Greene, R. J. Culturally compatible HR strategies. HR

Why did the New Zealand government offer Warner Brothers incentives to Research Paper

Why did the New Zealand government offer Warner Brothers incentives to film The Hobbit in New Zealand - Research Paper Example The intent was also inclusive of changing the industry and society into a positive atmosphere, specifically with the expectation that the film would grow in popularity. This was combined with the noted changes in statistics of the society, which required alterations to offer more for those who were living in the region. The approach which was taken toward the filming as well as the expected economic stimulation led to the filming being a positive measure for growth in the economy while creating the destination as one that was branded through both landscape and the popularity of the filming. Moving into Economic Growth A main reason why New Zealand allowed Warner Brothers to film â€Å"The Hobbit† in New Zealand was because of the economic growth that was associated with the film. This was specific to the time frame, which is based on a global movement where each location is able to offer a unique element for the globe as a whole. To be a part of this movement is also the need to create a different understanding and highlight of various locations. The belief from the government was that this particular movie would highlight the best aspects of New Zealand, specifically with the nature shots and the elements of fantasy that were attributed to the landscape. This particular concept led to New Zealand opening into the global market and to push into free trade within the economy, specifically because it forced the barriers in the country to be removed. The intent was then partially based on changing global relationships and growth for a different approach to the economy (Gould, 2010). The concept of opening into free trade is one which was specific to the identification of businesses in New Zealand and the current state which they are in. It was believed that the trade unions and the businesses would be positively affected by highlighting the New Zealand territory, specifically because it would bring a sense of trust and popularity to the businesses in the re gion. This was combined with highlighting the advantages of New Zealand. For instance, the region is known as subsidy free in the free trade agreement; however, it has not opened to the global level of commerce in most regions. The highlights of different countries are also creating fair trade which occurs because of what is known as well as where the best deals are within the economy. By showing the main ideologies of New Zealand, those interested in business and other approaches to fair trade were able to investigate into global agreements while recognizing the strengths that were associated with the approach to partnering with a subsidy free region (Weyer, 2005). The approach which was taken with the economy was known to create a high stimulus and to open the free trade agreement to the region. The return was a $363 million amount of cash that went into the economy from tourism, trade with businesses in the region while filming and a high amount of tourism which began to grow aft er the popularity of the film. This was combined with a continuous range of additional economic activity from $119 to $227 million and indirect benefits of $10 million to $34 million. The concept was based on an international competition for the region to be highlighted as a global area for commerce, trade, environment and other concepts that were portrayed in the film. The scheme allowed the film producers to highlight the best of New Zealand, specifically to stimulate the economy and to force in levels of growth by the growing popularity of the region. The figures show that this particular tactic worked to stimulate the New Zealand economy (New Zealand Film Commission, 2011). Social Stimulus The concept of stimulating the economy not only worked

Obstacles Facing Sysco Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 1

Obstacles Facing Sysco - Case Study Example After granting the implementation of BI software into Sysco, the company initially decided to customize it according to their business purpose and train their employees to use it properly (Harvard Business School Publishing, â€Å"Business Intelligence Software at SYSCO†). Sysco is a big company with 420,000 customers and it had employed 45000 employees in the year 2002. Sysco’s calculated sales in the year 2002 were 23.4 billion dollars. Thus, the company’s biggest obstacle is to determine the amount of software it will need to operate the firm. The company also has to consider the number of licenses they have to buy for using this software. If Sysco buys software then the vendor will provide the company a suitable discount. Thus, it was a great challenge for Sysco or only by the amount needed for the present time (Mcafee & Wagonfeld, â€Å"Business Intelligence Software at SYSCO†). With the help of BI software, the company can create a customer profile and frequently update them. The company compares the customer profile with each other with regard to ordering. After that, they can create a report which will show the sales of additional products and help to decide further prospects towards the customer. It would be tough to keep this record manually without the BI software. This way they can keep tracking the customer as they are reducing the use of certain specific products or increasing the order. This also shows whether the customer is satisfied with their service or not. It helps to recognize the fact that whether Sysco is loosing out on their customers to their competitors due to unhappiness with the provided service of Sysco. They can constantly monitor the customer from the report generated by BI software and identify which customer is valuable to them and which customer they are losing.   

Modernism and Conceptual Art Thesis Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 6500 words

Modernism and Conceptual Art - Thesis Example The essay "Modernism and Conceptual Art" discusses relationships between modernism and conceptual art. Conceptual art is widely regarded to have begun in the ‘dada’ movement that occurred in Switzerland, Germany, France, America, and other countries during the early 20th Century. Dada artists like Marcel Duchamp enshrined urinals on pedestals, signing them with an alias in parody of the authoritative time stamp and signature which was already equated with monetary value in the fame or status driven art, gallery, and collectibles trade at the time. Similarly, Rene Magritte famously inscribed â€Å"Ceci n'est pas une pipe† across a painting of a pipe, to inspire many who studied art to question the nature of artistic representation in an era where formal abstract painting was being developed as a valid method of self-expression. In the modern perception of the artist, his or her personal views, theories, conflicts, psychology, and philosophy of life are all assumed to be summarized and expressed through the process of art, completely or in fragments, creating objects of appreciation with symbolic social messages and embodying a personal commitment to an aesthetic, beauty or truth. Yet, the viewer or audience may ultimately interpret a work outside of its original intended context, just as art history elevates some artists and themes to make them canonical, collectible, valuable, and teachable on a social level of shared subjectivities. Conceptual Art is inherently critical.

The African Art Influence on Pablo Picassos Work Research Paper

The African Art Influence on Pablo Picassos Work - Research Paper Example The paper "The African Art Influence on Pablo Picasso’s Work" discusses the ways in which African art influenced the art of Pablo Picasso. It also provides examples of his artworks to support this idea. His most famous work of art was the "Les Demoiselles d' Avignon"1907 that portrayed the proto cubist as part of the movement that he had cofounded with Georges Braque. His paintings were astounding pieces of art as he demonstrated his prowess at an early age. The paintings he did carried with them the realistic aspect during his adolescent years. While in Paris, he revolutionized his tact by incepting art expressions by African artists. Picasso described artifacts from Africa as forms that did not represent ideas that existed in the natural world. For him, this was the beginning of an untainted carrier as his works stood above those of his rival artists. His style was unique, as he became one of the first artists not to draw influence from the western art. Remarkably, he became the pioneer of the new aesthetic form of communicative art that dwelled on expressions and ideas from Africa. In essence, the European Scramble for Africa aided the growth of African art in France. Traditional art found its way to France through the travels of the Frenchmen across its vast territory as part of their expeditions. Essentially, Pablo first encountered traditional African art at the Musee d’ Ethnographie, which was a museum in central Paris that interred antiques from the African continent. To other scholars and artists, this form of art was primitive2 as the continent had not yet experienced any form westernization. Ironically, Matisse, a French artist also influenced Picasso to majoring in to African art. During one of the dinners at their friend Getrude Stein, Matisse showed Picasso a Congolese piece that he had purchased from a supplier of African artifacts who went by the name Emile Heymann3. Picasso could not have enough of the piece that evening, and even tually it led him into making apiece inspired by the artwork he had seen. Les Demoiselles d ’Avignon Les Demoiselles d ’Avignon became a painting that a French critic viewed as one which had erupted from an ever-blazing fire. For instance, the fire that the critic referred to was the constant artistic battle between Matisse and Picasso. By doing the painting, Picasso tried proved to prove to the world that he was better than Matisse was. It was a reply to Matisse’s painting Le Bonheur de Vivre which he unveiled during an exhibition for the emerging artists. During the exhibition, the spotlight was on him because of the Le Bonheur de Vivre enormous piece that had captured the entire audience. This stirred up emotions in Picasso’s mind as Matisse’s painting had utilized color and form to create an incredible blend of the two concepts. As a result, Picasso did Les Demoiselles d ’Avignon as a counter attack to Matisse. The Les Demoiselles d â₠¬â„¢Avignon painting involved two stages to complete it. The first stage had the original concept of women at a Barcelonan brothel that which he had visited. The second stage of doing this painting drew inspiration from his visit to the Trocadero museum of African art, which totally revolutionized the idea. He opted to use masklike faces that synchronized with a two dimensional plane instead of the initial attractive females who were nude. The Bakota people from Gabon inspired the figures while the Dan4 people from Ivory Coast

The Problems in Human Patterns of Consumption Essay

The Problems in Human Patterns of Consumption - Essay Example All the sub-topics will support the main subject matter, which are the human patterns and quantities of consumption. By the end of the research paper, all points taken will be analyzed into a conclusive synthesis. As for now, this will be a comprehensive summary and exposition of the research at hand. This will explain the rationale behind the choice of the research topic and the relevance it has in the real world. The topic focuses on the issues that human patterns of consumption have affected negatively the status of the natural environment. There are serious and grave problems that produce unrestrained human patterns of consumption. Environmental research has indicated that human consumption of natural resources is outpacing the capacity which the Earth can produce. It does not help that while this fact is being overlooked by most of the world’s population, it seems that human needs and wants are taken as more important than environmental concerns. Historically, the problems in human patterns of consumption were more apparent during the age of human modernization and industrialization. As human technological development started to improve, so did the rate of consumption by human beings on the environment. As human populations started to grow by the thousands and millions per day, the increasing demand for human wants and needs are multiplied exponentially. This is manifested through different negative effects on the natural environment. As human populations grew, so did the necessity to expand for shelter become more apparent. Towns would expand to become cities, and cities would become a sprawling metropolis. The materials needed to pursue this task would require so many natural resources to get this done. Many trees would require being lumbered or cut down to construct buildings, houses and fixtures for shelter and commercial use. At the same time, many natural wilderness areas would have to be cleared out to provide  land for human shelter and consumption.

Western philosophy Essay Example for Free

Western philosophy Essay Philosophy is the discipline concerned with questions of how one should live (ethics); what sorts of things exist and what are their essential natures (metaphysics); what counts as genuine knowledge (epistemology); and what are the correct principles of reasoning (logic). The word is of Ancient Greek origin (philosophia), meaning love of wisdom. Definition of philosophy: Every definition of philosophy is controversial. The field has historically expanded and changed depending upon what kinds of questions were interesting or relevant in a given era. It is generally agreed that philosophy is a method, rather than a set of claims, propositions, or theories. Its investigations are based upon rational thinking, striving to make no unexamined assumptions and no leaps based on faith or pure analogy. Different philosophers have had varied ideas about the nature of reason. There is also disagreement about the subject matter of philosophy. Some think that philosophy examines the process of inquiry itself. Others, that there are essentially philosophical propositions which it is the task of philosophy to answer. Although the word philosophy originates in Ancient Greece, many figures in the history of other cultures have addressed similar topics in similar ways. The philosophers of East and South Asia are discussed in Eastern philosophy, while the philosophers of North Africa and the Middle East, because of their strong interactions with Europe, are usually considered part of Western philosophy. Branches of philosophy: The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as to seem not worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it. To give an exhaustive list of the main divisions of philosophy is difficult, because various topics have been studied by philosophers at various times. Ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, and logic are usually included. Other topics include politics, aesthetics, and religion. In addition, most academic subjects have a philosophy, for example the philosophy of science, the philosophy of mathematics, and the philosophy of history. Metaphysics was first studied systematically by Aristotle. He did not use that term; the term emerged because in later editions of Aristotles works the book on what is now called metaphysics came after Aristotles study of physics. He calls the subject first philosophy (or sometimes just wisdom), and says it is the subject that deals with first causes and the principles of things. The modern meaning of the term is any inquiry dealing with the ultimate nature of what exists. Epistemology is concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge, and whether knowledge is possible. Ethics, or moral philosophy, is concerned with questions of how agents ought to act. Platos early dialogues constitute a search for definitions of virtue. Metaethics is the study of whether ethical value judgments can be objective at all. Ethics can also be conducted within a religious context. Logic has two broad divisions: mathematical logic (formal symbolic logic) and what is now called philosophical logic, the logic of language. Greek philosophy and Hellenistic philosophy: Ancient Greek philosophy may be divided into the pre-Socratic period, the Socratic period, and the post-Aristotelian period (or Hellenistic period). The pre-Socratic period was characterized by metaphysical speculation, often preserved in the form of grand, sweeping statements, such as All is fire or All changes. Important pre-Socratic philosophers include Pythagoras, Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Democritus, Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Empedocles. The Socratic period is named in honor of Socrates, who, along with his pupil Plato, revolutionized philosophy through the use of the Socratic method, which developed the very general philosophical methods of definition, analysis, and synthesis. While no writings of Socrates survive, his influence as a skeptic is transmitted through Platos works. Platos writings are often considered basic texts in philosophy as they defined the fundamental issues of philosophy for future generations. These issues and others were taken up by Aristotle, who studied at Platos school, the Academy, and who often disagreed with what Plato had written. The subsequent period ushered in such philosophers as Euclid, Epicurus, Chrysippus, Hipparchia the Cynic, Pyrrho, and Sextus Empiricus. Though many of these philosophers may seem irrelevant given current scientific knowledge, their systems of thought continue to influence both philosophy and science today. Medieval philosophy History: Medieval philosophy is the philosophy of Western Europe and the Middle East during what is now known as the medieval era or the Middle Ages, roughly extending from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance period. Medieval philosophy is defined partly by the rediscovery and further development of classical Greek philosophy and Hellenistic philosophy, and partly by the need to address theological problems and to integrate sacred doctrine (in Islam, Judaism and Christianity) and secular learning. Some problems discussed throughout this period are the relation of faith to reason, the existence and unity of God, the object of theology and metaphysics, the problems of knowledge, of universals, and of individuation. Philosophers from the Middle Ages include the Muslim philosophers Alkindus, Alfarabi, Alhacen, Avicenna, Algazel, Avempace, Abubacer and Averroes; the Jewish philosophers Maimonides and Gersonides; and the Christian philosophers Anselm, Peter Abelard, Roger Bacon, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham and Jean Buridan. Early modern philosophy History(c. 1600 c. 1800): Modern philosophy is usually considered to begin with the revival of skepticism and the genesis of modern physical science. Canonical figures include Montaigne, Descartes, Locke, Spinoza, Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. Chronologically, this era spans the 17th and 18th centuries, and is generally considered to end with Kants systematic attempt to reconcile Newtonian physics with traditional metaphysical topics. Later modern philosophy History(c. 1800 c. 1960): Later modern philosophy is usually considered to begin after the philosophy of Immanuel Kant at the beginning of the 19th-century. German idealists, Fichte, Hegel, Hoelderlin, Schelling, expanded on the work of Kant by maintaining that the world is rational and it is knowable as rational. Rejecting idealism, other philosophers, many working from outside the university, initiated lines of thought that would occupy academic philosophy in the early and mid-20th century: Contemporary philosophy History(c. 1960 present): In the last hundred years, philosophy has increasingly become an activity practiced within the modern research university, and accordingly it has grown more specialized and more distinct from the natural sciences. Much of philosophy in this period concerns itself with explaining the relation between the theories of the natural sciences and the ideas of the humanities or common sense. It is arguable that later modern philosophy ended with contemporary philosophys shift of focus from 19th century philosophers to 20th century philosophers. Realism and nominalism in Philosophy: Realism sometimes means the position opposed to the 18th-century Idealism, namely that some things have real existence outside the mind. Classically, however, realism is the doctrine that abstract entities corresponding to universal terms like man have a real existence. It is opposed to nominalism, the view that abstract or universal terms are words only, or denote mental states such as ideas, beliefs, or intentions. The latter position, famously held by William of Ockham, is conceptualism. Rationalism and empiricism in Philosophy: Rationalism is any view emphasizing the role or importance of human reason. Extreme rationalism tries to base all knowledge on reason alone. Rationalism typically starts from premises that cannot coherently be denied, then attempts by logical steps to deduce every possible object of knowledge. The first rationalist, in this broad sense, is often held to be Parmenides (fl. 480 BCE), who argued that it is impossible to doubt that thinking actually occurs. But thinking must have an object, therefore something beyond thinking really exists. Parmenides deduced that what really exists must have certain properties for example, that it cannot come into existence or cease to exist, that it is a coherent whole, that it remains the same eternally (in fact, exists altogether outside time). Zeno of Elea (born c. 489 BCE) was a disciple of Parmenides, and argued that motion is impossible, since the assertion that it exists implies a contradiction. Plato (427-347 BCE) was also influenced by Parmenides, but combined rationalism with a form of realism. The philosophers work is to consider being, and the essence of things. But the characteristic of essences is that they are universal. The nature of a man, a triangle, a tree, applies to all men, all triangles, all trees. Plato argued that these essences are mind-independent forms, that humans (but particularly philosophers) can come to know by reason, and by ignoring the distractions of sense-perception. Modern rationalism begins with Descartes. Reflection on the nature of perceptual experience, as well as scientific discoveries in physiology and optics, led Descartes (and also Locke) to the view that we are directly aware of ideas, rather than objects. This view gave rise to three questions: Is an idea a true copy of the real thing that it represents? Sensation is not a direct interaction between bodily objects and our sense, but is a physiological process involving representation (for example, an image on the retina). Locke thought that a secondary quality such as a sensation of green could in no way resemble the arrangement of particles in matter that go to produce this sensation, although he thought that primary qualities such as shape, size, number, were really in objects. How can physical objects such as chairs and tables, or even physiological processes in the brain, give rise to mental items such as ideas? This is part of what became known as the mind-body problem. If all the contents of awareness are ideas, how can we know that anything exists apart from ideas? Descartes tried to address the last problem by reason. He began, echoing Parmenides, with a principle that he thought could not coherently be denied: I think, therefore I am (often given in his original Latin: Cogito ergo sum). From this principle, Descartes went on to construct a complete system of knowledge (which involves proving the existence of God, using, among other means, a version of the ontological argument). His view that reason alone could yield substantial truths about reality strongly influenced those philosophers usually considered modern rationalists (such as Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz, and Christian Wolff), while provoking criticism from other philosophers who have retrospectively come to be grouped together as empiricists. Empiricism, in contrast to rationalism, downplays or dismisses the ability of reason alone to yield knowledge of the world, preferring to base any knowledge we have on our senses. John Locke propounded the classic empiricist view in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding in 1689, developing a form of naturalism and empiricism on roughly scientific (and Newtonian) principles. During this era, religious ideas played a mixed role in the struggles that preoccupied secular philosophy. Bishop Berkeleys famous idealist refutation of key tenets of Isaac Newton is a case of an Enlightenment philosopher who drew substantially from religious ideas. Other influential religious thinkers of the time include Blaise Pascal, Joseph Butler, and Jonathan Edwards. Other major writers, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Edmund Burke, took a rather different path. The restricted interests of many of the philosophers of the time foreshadow the separation and specialization of different areas of philosophy that would occur in the 20th century. Skepticism in Philosophy: Skepticism is a philosophical attitude that questions the possibility of obtaining any sort of knowledge. It was first articulated by Pyrrho, who believed that everything could be doubted except appearances. Sextus Empiricus (2nd century CE) describes skepticism as an ability to place in antithesis, in any manner whatever, appearances and judgments, and thus to come first of all to a suspension of judgment and then to mental tranquility. Skepticism so conceived is not merely the use of doubt, but is the use of doubt for a particular end: a calmness of the soul, or ataraxia. Skepticism poses itself as a challenge to dogmatism, whose adherents think they have found the truth. Sextus noted that the reliability of perception may be questioned, because it is idiosyncratic to the perceiver. The appearance of individual things changes depending on whether they are in a group: for example, the shavings of a goats horn are white when taken alone, yet the intact horn is black. A pencil, when viewed lengthwise, looks like a stick; but when examined at the tip, it looks merely like a circle. Skepticism was revived in the early modern period by Michel de Montaigne and Blaise Pascal. Its most extreme exponent, however, was David Hume. Hume argued that there are only two kinds of reasoning: what he called probable and demonstrative (cf Humes fork). Neither of these two forms of reasoning can lead us to a reasonable belief in the continued existence of an external world. Demonstrative reasoning cannot do this, because demonstration (that is, deductive reasoning from well-founded premises) alone cannot establish the uniformity of nature (as captured by scientific laws and principles, for example). Such reason alone cannot establish that the future will resemble the past. We have certain beliefs about the world (that the sun will rise tomorrow, for example), but these beliefs are the product of habit and custom, and do not depend on any sort of logical inferences from what is already given certain. But probable reasoning (inductive reasoning), which aims to take us from the observed to the unobserved, cannot do this either: it also depends on the uniformity of nature, and this supposed uniformity cannot be proved, without circularity, by any appeal to uniformity. The best that either sort of reasoning can accomplish is conditional truth: if certain assumptions are true, then certain conclusions follow. So nothing about the world can be established with certainty. Hume concludes that there is no solution to the skeptical argument except, in effect, to ignore it. Even if these matters were resolved in every case, we would have in turn to justify our standard of justification, leading to an infinite regress (hence the term regress skepticism). Many philosophers have questioned the value of such skeptical arguments. The question of whether we can achieve knowledge of the external world is based on how high a standard we set for the justification of such knowledge. If our standard is absolute certainty, then we cannot progress beyond the existence of mental sensations. We cannot even deduce the existence of a coherent or continuing I that experiences these sensations, much less the existence of an external world. On the other hand, if our standard is too low, then we admit follies and illusions into our body of knowledge. This argument against absolute skepticism asserts that the practical philosopher must move beyond solipsism, and accept a standard for knowledge that is high but not absolute. Idealism in Philosophy: Idealism is the epistemological doctrine that nothing can be directly known outside of the minds of thinking beings. Or in an alternative stronger form, it is the metaphysical doctrine that nothing exists apart from minds and the contents of minds. In modern Western philosophy, the epistemological doctrine begins as a core tenet of Descartes that what is in the mind is known more reliably than what is known through the senses. The first prominent modern Western idealist in the metaphysical sense was George Berkeley. Berkeley argued that there is no deep distinction between mental states, such as feeling pain, and the ideas about so-called external things, that appear to us through the senses. There is no real distinction, in this view, between certain sensations of heat and light that we experience, which lead us to believe in the external existence of a fire, and the fire itself. Those sensations are all there is to fire. Berkeley expressed this with the Latin formula esse est percipi: to be is to be perceived. In this view the opinion, strangely prevailing upon men, that houses, mountains, and rivers have an existence independent of their perception by a thinking being is false. Forms of idealism were prevalent in philosophy from the 18th century to the early 20th century. Transcendental idealism, advocated by Immanuel Kant, is the view that there are limits on what can be understood, since there is much that cannot be brought under the conditions of objective judgment. Kant wrote his Critique of Pure Reason (1781-1787) in an attempt to reconcile the conflicting approaches of rationalism and empiricism, and to establish a new groundwork for studying metaphysics. Kants intention with this work was to look at what we know and then consider what must be true about it, as a logical consequence of, the way we know it. One major theme was that there are fundamental features of reality that escape our direct knowledge because of the natural limits of the human faculties. Although Kant held that objective knowledge of the world required the mind to impose a conceptual or categorical framework on the stream of pure sensory data a framework including space and time themselves he maintained that things-in-themselves existed independently of  our perceptions and judgments; he was therefore not an idealist in any simple sense. Indeed, Kants account of things-in-themselves is both controversial and highly complex. Continuing his work, Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich Schelling dispensed with belief in the independent existence of the world, and created a thoroughgoing idealist philosophy. The most notable work of this German idealism was G. W. F. Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit, of 1807. Hegel admitted his ideas werent new, but that all the previous philosophies had been incomplete. His goal was to correctly finish their job. Hegel asserts that the twin aims of philosophy are to account for the contradictions apparent in human experience (which arise, for instance, out of the supposed contradictions between being and not being ), and also simultaneously to resolve and preserve these contradictions by showing their compatibility at a higher level of examination (being and not being are resolved with becoming) . This program of acceptance and reconciliation of contradictions is known as the Hegelian dialectic. Philosophers in the Hegelian tradition include Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach, who coined the term projection as pertaining to our inability to recognize anything in the external world without projecting qualities of ourselves upon those things, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and the British idealists, notably T. H. Green, J. M. E. McTaggart, and F. H. Bradley. Few 20th century philosophers have embraced idealism. However, quite a few have embraced Hegelian dialectic. Immanuel Kants Copernican Turn also remains an important philosophical concept today. Pragmatism in Philosophy: Pragmatism was founded in the spirit of finding a scientific concept of truth, which is not dependent on either personal insight (or revelation) or reference to some metaphysical realm. The truth of a statement should be judged by the effect it has on our actions and truth should be seen as that which the whole of scientific enquiry will ultimately agree on. This should probably be seen as a guiding principle more than a definition of what it means for something to be true, though the details of how this principle should be interpreted have been subject to discussion since Peirce first conceived it. Like Rorty many seem convinced that Pragmatism holds that the truth of beliefs does not consist in their correspondence with reality, but in their usefulness and efficacy. The late 19th-century American philosophers Charles Peirce and William James were its co-founders, and it was later developed by John Dewey as instrumentalism. Since the usefulness of any belief at any time might be contingent on circumstance, Peirce and James conceptualised final truth as that which would be established only by the future, final settlement of all opinion. Critics have accused pragmatism of falling victim to a simple fallacy: because something that is true proves useful, that usefulness is the basis for its truth. Thinkers in the pragmatist tradition have included John Dewey, George Santayana,W. V. O. Quine and C. I. Lewis. Phenomenology in Philosophy: Edmund Husserls phenomenology was an ambitious attempt to lay the foundations for an account of the structure of conscious experience in general. An important part of Husserls phenomenological project was to show that all conscious acts are directed at or about objective content, a feature that Husserl called intentionality. In the first part of his two-volume work, the Logical Investigations (1901), he launched an extended attack on psychologism. In the second part, he began to develop the technique of descriptive phenomenology, with the aim of showing how objective judgments are indeed grounded in conscious experience not, however, in the first-person experience of particular individuals, but in the properties essential to any experiences of the kind in question. He also attempted to identify the essential properties of any act of meaning. He developed the method further in Ideas (1913) as transcendental phenomenology, proposing to ground actual experience, and thus all fields of human knowledge, in the structure of consciousness of an ideal, or transcendental, ego. Later, he attempted to reconcile his transcendental standpoint with an acknowledgement of the intersubjective life-world in which real individual subjects interact. Husserl published only a few works in his lifetime, which treat phenomenology mainly in abstract methodological terms; but he left an enormous quantity of unpublished concrete analyses. Husserls work was immediately influential in Germany, with the foundation of phenomenological schools in Munich and Gottingen. Phenomenology later achieved international fame through the work of such philosophers as Martin Heidegger (formerly Husserls research assistant), Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Indeed, through the work of Heidegger and Sartre, Husserls focus on subjective experience influenced aspects of existentialism. Existentialism in Philosophy: Although they didnt use the term, the nineteenth century philosophers Soren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche are widely regarded as the fathers of existentialism. Their influence, however, has extended beyond existentialist thought. The main target of Kierkegaards writings was the idealist philosophical system of Hegel which, he thought, ignored or excluded the inner subjective life of living human beings. Kierkegaard, conversely, held that truth is subjectivity, arguing that what is most important to an actual human being are questions dealing with an individuals inner relationship to existence. In particular, Kierkegaard, a Christian, believed that the truth of religious faith was a subjective question, and one to be wrestled with passionately. Although Kierkegaard and Nietzsche were among his influences, the extent to which the German philosopher Martin Heidegger should be considered an existentialist is debatable. In Being and Time he presented a method of rooting philosophical explanations in human existence (Dasein) to be analysed in terms of existential categories (existentiale); and this has led many commentators to treat him as an important figure in the existentialist movement. However, in The Letter on Humanism, Heidegger explicitly rejected the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre became the best-known proponent of existentialism, exploring it not only in theoretical works such as Being and Nothingness , but also in plays and novels. Sartre, along with Albert Camus and Simone de Beauvoir, all represented an avowedly atheistic branch of existentialism, which is now more closely associated with their ideas of nausea, contingency, bad faith, and the absurd than with Kierkegaards spiritual angst. Nevertheless, the focus on the individual human being, responsible before the universe for the authenticity of his or her existence, is common to all these thinkers. Structuralism and post-structuralism in Philosophy: Inaugurated by the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, structuralism sought to ferret out the underlying systems through analysing the discourses they both limit and make possible. Saussure conceived of the sign as being delimited by all the other signs in the system, and ideas as being incapable of existence prior to linguistic structure, which articulates thought. This led continental thought away from humanism, and toward what was termed the decentering of man: language is no longer spoken by man to express a true inner self, but language speaks man. Structuralism sought the province of a hard science, but its positivism soon came under fire by poststructuralism, a wide field of thinkers, some of whom were once themselves structuralists, but later came to criticize it. Structuralists believed they could analyse systems from an external, objective standing, for example, but the poststructuralists argued that this is incorrect, that one cannot transcend structures and thus analysis is itself determined by what it examines, that systems are ultimately self-referential. Furthermore, while the distinction between the signifier and signified was treated as crystalline by structuralists, poststructuralists asserted that every attempt to grasp the signified would simply result in the proliferation of more signifiers, so meaning is always in a state of being deferred, making an ultimate interpretation impossible. Structuralism came to dominate continental philosophy from the 1960s onward, encompassing thinkers as diverse as Michel Foucault and Jacques Lacan. The analytic tradition in Philosophy: The term analytic philosophy roughly designates a group of philosophical methods that stress clarity of meaning above all other criteria. The philosophy developed as a critique of Hegel and his followers in particular, and of speculative philosophy in general. Some schools in the group include 20th-century realism, logical atomism, logical positivism, and ordinary language. The motivation is to have philosophical studies go beyond personal opinion and begin to have the cogency of mathematical proofs. In 1921, Ludwig Wittgenstein published his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, which gave a rigidly logical account of linguistic and philosophical issues. At the time, he understood most of the problems of philosophy as mere puzzles of language, which could be solved by clear thought. Years later he would reverse a number of the positions he had set out in the Tractatus, in for example his second major work, Philosophical Investigations (1953). Investigations encouraged the development of ordinary language philosophy, which was promoted by Gilbert Ryle, J.L. Austin, and a few others. The ordinary language philosophy thinkers shared a common outlook with many older philosophers (Jeremy Bentham, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and John Stuart Mill), and it was this style of philosophical inquiry that characterized English-language philosophy for the second half of the 20th century. Ethics and political in Philosophy: From ancient times, and well beyond them, the roots of justification for political authority were inescapably tied to outlooks on human nature. In The Republic, Plato declared that the ideal society would be run by a council of philosopher-kings, since those best at philosophy are best able to realize the good. Even Plato, however, required philosophers to make their way in the world for many years before beginning their rule at the age of fifty. For Aristotle, humans are political animals (i. e. social animals), and governments are set up in order to pursue good for the community. Aristotle reasoned that, since the state (polis) was the highest form of community, it has the purpose of pursuing the highest good. Aristotle viewed political power as the result of natural inequalities in skill and virtue. Because of these differences, he favored an aristocracy of the able and virtuous. For Aristotle, the person cannot be complete unless he or she lives in a community. His The Nicomachean Ethics and The Politics are meant to be read in that order. The first book addresses virtues (or excellences) in the person as a citizen; the second addresses the proper form of government to ensure that citizens will be virtuous, and therefore complete. Both books deal with the essential role of justice in civic life. Nicolas of Cusa rekindled Platonic thought in the early 15th century. He promoted democracy in Medieval Europe, both in his writings and in his organization of the Council of Florence. Unlike Aristotle and the Hobbesian tradition to follow, Cusa saw human beings as equal and divine (that is, made in Gods image), so democracy would be the only just form of government. Cusas views are credited by some as sparking the Italian Renaissance, which gave rise to the notion of Nation-States. Later, Niccolo Machiavelli rejected the views of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas as unrealistic. The ideal sovereign is not the embodiment of the moral virtues; rather the sovereign does whatever is successful and necessary, rather than what is morally praiseworthy. Thomas Hobbes also contested many elements of Aristotles views. For Hobbes, human nature is essentially anti-social: people are essentially egoistic, and this egoism makes life difficult in the natural state of things. Moreover, Hobbes argued, though people may have natural inequalities, these are trivial, since no particular talents or virtues that people may have will make them safe from harm inflicted by others. For these reasons, Hobbes concluded that the state arises from a common agreement to raise the community out of the state of nature. This can only be done by the establishment of a sovereign, in which (or whom) is vested complete control over the community, and which is able to inspire awe and terror in its subjects. Many in the Enlightenment were unsatisfied with existing doctrines in political philosophy, which seemed to marginalize or neglect the possibility of a democratic state. David Hume was among the first philosophers to question the existence of God, circa 1700. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was among those who attempted to overturn these doctrines: he responded to Hobbes by claiming that a human is by nature a kind of noble savage, and that society and social contracts corrupt this nature. Another critic was John Locke. In Second Treatise on Government he agreed with Hobbes that the nation-state was an efficient tool for raising humanity out of a deplorable state, but he argued that the sovereign might become an abominable institution compared to the relatively benign unmodulated state of nature. Following the doctrine of the fact-value distinction, due in part to the influence of David Hume and his student Adam Smith, appeals to human nature for political justification were weakened. Nevertheless, many political philosophers, especially moral realists, still make use of some essential human nature as a basis for their arguments. Consequentialism, Deontological ethics, and Virtue ethics in Philosophy: One debate that has commanded the attention of ethicists in the modern era has been between consequentialism (actions are to be morally evaluated solely by their consequences) and deontology (actions are to be morally evaluated solely by consideration of agents duties, the rights of those whom the action concerns, or both).

Eye Tracking in Usability Evaluation

Eye Tracking in Usability Evaluation   In this literature review I have talked about experiments conducted on usability of various interfaces and designs using eye-tracking. The authors of the papers focus on various types of eye movements for usability evaluations like saccades, pupil dilation, fixation, scanpaths etc. Based on these measurements the try to infer the point/area of interest of the users, point on entry, the cognitive load etc. about the user. These conclusions help in understanding the mindset of the users which can be generalised to a larger population within the proximity of time and space and help in making recommendations for better design of the interface. Benefits of eye tracking: Eye tracking has many benefits. Using eye tracking methods for usability evaluation one can track how the users interact with a given interface or environment. They help in measuring the effectiveness of a visual element on the interface. The measurements recorded can give an insight into the users mind while making a decision regrading searching or navigating an interface. This can be done by measuring what users are interested in, what they are ignoring and what is distracting them from their current tasks. They help in figuring out the Area of Interest which I a randomly shaped box that may contain some information or object or potential interest to the user. The quantitative data collected through eye tracking gives a visuals representation usually in the form of heatmaps(hotspots) which help in better understanding the results. Eye tracking equipments used now-a-days like Tobii and SMI are easy to set-up, calibrate and handle. They are unobtrusive and p rovided accurate real-time feedback. The fast passed usability testing of the software development industry, test conducted using eye tracking can of valuable and useful input providing benefits what will help the users. Eye Tracking in Usability Evalusation: A practitioners Guide [1] This paper is a general guideline on the use of eye tracking used for usability evaluation. The author talks about the specialists who conduct the study, the metrics used with the testing, the protocol followed to conduct a test. They also talk about when eye tracking can come in handy as compared to the normal usability test which usually include heuristic evaluation, cognitive walkthrough, checklist, remoter-usability testing, click-tracking etc. The authors talk about the different types of eye movements that are measured like saccades, fixation, pupil dilation, scanpaths etc. These movements provide a log of the visual attention of a user on the interface. It is also interesting to know that the eye tracking gadgets only track the movement of one eye, usually the dominant eye of the beholder. Saccades: rapid eye movements. Fixation: A linger at a point for more than 300ms. Scanpath: established by the sequence of saccades and fixations. Most of the studies conducted analyzed the fixation pattern. Which can be realized through heatmaps. Red indicates the highest level of fixation followed by green yellow. The areas which are not colored drew no attention. F-Shaped Pattern for reading web content[4] The author says that a eye tracking study was conducted on 232 users on their reading behaviour on webpages. They found a governing F shaped pattern which was undeviating among most of the users. The participants of the experiment were fond to first adhere a long horizontal gaze across the screen, followed by a short horizontal gaze on the area below and finally giving a quick vertical scan of the content of the webpage. Occasionally there were a few cases of an E and an L shaped pattern but mostly F was dominant with variation in the placement of the horizontal bars. These patterns suggest hat usres dont read the text on a website line by line. They like to give a scan to see if any of the content available if of interest or not. Such reading patterns suggest that first paragraph should contain important and catchy information. While scanning vertically users generally users generally read the first two words of the text. Visual Hierarchy and Viewing Behaviour: An eye tracking study[2] The authors of this paper aim to suggest effective improvements in the design of a web page to attract more users and to disperse important information in an effective manner. For this purpose, they have analyzed the gazing patterns of users. The author have tried to decipher the reason behind the F shape viewing pattern by most users which could be due to the arrangements of element on the interface or the task at hand. To test this they used 4 prototypes of a webpage with each having a different visual hierarchy. The prototypes differed in the form of being well structed or not and 2 had images of people and 2 did not. 48 participants were used for the study which were from different field of the industry and each one was given either a searching task or a browsing task on one of the 4 prototypes. Fixation patterns using heatmaps was used to analyze the data. It was found that users fixate more on the part of the page which is above the fold. The F shaped pattern was not apparent w ith any of the conditions as the website was more visually complex as compared to a text based simple website. The well structured and organized pages drew more attention. During searching users tend to gaze in a scattered manner with more focus on the left side of the page where the navigation links are usually located. Browsing is less scattered with few fixations time and is usually defined within the center of the interface. Faces drew more attention only when they were placed above the fold of the page and during browsing. They concluded that these insights into a users viewing pattern can help make better designs for different type of websites to attract users. No subjective ratings were used to access users comfort while dealing with the different types of interfaces. Efficiency Trust and visual appeal: Usability testing through eye tracking[5] The authors conducted a research on the efficiency, trust and visual appeal of a website and made recommendations on what kind of an interface would attract more customers to an e-commerce website and what type of user experience would make a first-time visitor a customer. The author believed that an element of social presence will give a more satisfying experience while navigating an automated website which lack humane warmth. This accompanied with a aesthetically pleasing interface will make the users trust the website more. To test this the authors came up with a set of tasks for the users and two hypothesis which were related to images of people on a website and the visual appeal of a website. 522 users were recruited for an online study and each of them were provided with a different prototype of a website. Users were asked the visual appeal and the level of trust on the website using seven point Likert scales. After performing p on the online study, authors concluded that websi tes with images of people are more visually appealing and in turn elicit a higher level of trust. It was fond that the users conduct the search from left to right. The online study was followed by an eye tracking experiment to confirm the results of the online study. They used a count heat map and a fixation heatmap. 40 were recruited for the eye tracking experiment. The experiment confirmed that images of faces are more helpful in drawing attention. Gender Preferences in Web Design: Usability Testing through Eye tracking[6] The authors of this papers tried to investigate the visual predilections of male and female users. They have tried to detect he noticeability of bricklets(small box containing useful information) based on their background colour images by male and female users. Since men and woman have different notion of attractiveness, an hypothesis was made on the noticeability of the different prototypes of the bricklets. Men have a tendency to like dark colors and women have a tendency to like light color. 36 participants were chosen for the study out of which 17 were male and 19 were female. 4 type of bricklets were designed with dark and light background color and with and without images. Tasks were designed in such a way so that the users were tested on their ability to detect certain kind of bricklets. It was found that both male and female fixate less on images and more on the bricklets without images. Female users were attracted more towards the darker background bricklets and male users w ere not biased towards a specific colour. The study concluded that what users find appealing is not necessary noticeable this was supported by the discrepancy in self report survey and the fixation duration on the bricklets by the users. Generation Y and Web Design: Usability through Eye tracking[7] The aim of the authors of this paper is to come up for better design recommendation for retail web sites to attract the millennial generation also knows as generation Y. This generation poses the strongest internet skills and spend around $200 a year on online retail. An hypothesis is made that Generation Y like large images preferably of celebrities and with search features and as little text as possible. Top 50 retail pages were selected. These pages were ranked on the characteristics posed by them based on the predilections of generation Y. A self report study and an eye tracking study was conducted to compare both the results. 99 participants were selected who possessed strong internet skills for the self report study. 9 participants were selected for the eye tracking experiment. The survey and the data provided by the eye tracking device supported the hypothesis made. Eye tracking in Web Search Tasks: Design Implications [3] The authors of this paper conducted an eye tracking usability testing for a web portal application which was developed by Oracle portal software. Seven users were selected to complete six tasks for the study. The users came across 15 screens while completing their tasks and had to spend around 360 seconds to complete one task. The authors recorded the key presses and mouse clicks on the interface and eye movements like saccades and fixations and the dwell time on the Area of Interest were diligently recorded. Every task started with a set of scenario and required the user to perform them based on his understanding. The results in this study were not in the form heatmaps but rather in the form of screen bitmap files, fixation file and object file. These files were amalgamated to perform data analysis. The study was performed in a very systematic way. The authors studied the eye movements of the users at the task level then at the screen level and then finally at the object level with the focus on Area of Interest. In-depth study was conducted regarding screen visits and distribution. The authors analyzed the pattern for navigating within and between portlets and concluded that there is an inclination for the users to notice the portlets on the left and the upper part of the screen in view. The authors tried to discover a relationship between user action, scene sequence and the data derived from the eye movement. Age-related Differences in Eye Tracking and Usability Performance: Website usability for Older Adults [8]. The authors of this paper conducted usability study of websites through eye tracking to make design recommendations which keep in mind the needs and ease of usability and navigation of older adults. 5 websites were used for the experiment. And a comparison was made on how you and old people interact with the environment. Around 3-7 young adults and 2-3 older adults were recruited. All of them a possessed a working knowledge about using the internet. The participants were given predefined tasks and their fixations were recorded using the unobtrusive eye tracking device. The participants also filled out a questionnaire to report their satisfaction level. It was found that older adults focus more on the center portion of the screen and ignore the information located on the peripheral areas. Cluttered periphery results in performance hindrance for the old users. The ignorance of the edge of the screen can be related to the cognitive decline encountered due to growing age. Older adults we re less accurate and efficient as compared to younger adults. Older adults who are ususally unfamiliar with the environment get easily distracted by unnecessary elements. Seven users are very less as compared to the recommendation of 10-30 participants made by [1]. There were often stements made by the authors that there is presently too little evidence to support the notion [3] suggesting that clearly 7 participants for the experiment was not enough and the results produced can be a threat to external validity. [1] also suggest to recruit 20% more participants in case there are problems with calibiratio of the equipment with the users. [2] used 48 users from different fields of the industry sector age not mentioned. 40 people in [5]. [6] 99 participants were recruited. [8] small number of users. Limits on generalizations made. Users were tested for their visual acuity The users were made to sign demographic, consent and disclosure forms. The authors conducted initial training tasks They used a head mounted system. Although these systems are good for tasks which may require a lot of head or body movement, they are obtrusive. They obstruct a certain portion of the of the field of view of the user and can interrupt a user in hi cognitive process or task at hand as he is constantly reminded of a apparatus being setup on his head. Since this experiment was conducted in 2002 the eye tracking instruments used that time were not technologically that advanced. Therefore, a lot of time and effort went into analyzing the data. Tape recorders were used to capture users comments and a video recorder was also used for in depth analysis. While conducting the experiment it was found that one of the users took very less time to complete the task as compared to others. The authors concluded that users learned about the interface while performing the tasks. But since one of the users showed less reaction to time to the given task at hand the inference suffers from a threat to internal validity because he possessed previous knowledge about similar interface. Threats to generalizibilty as an intrusive setup was used. Dis advantages: tedious, requires extensive data reduction, focus on micro-level behaviours, too much noise in the data. Lots of work required to narrow down on the data that is needed Eye tracking study is usually conducted where results of traditional software usability results are compared with that of the results from the eye tracking derived results. The traditional usability tests are usually done using five point Likert scale. In many experiments authors have concluded that users are inclined towards noticing the upper left side of the interface. It maybe possible that users in these experiments are used to languages that goes left to right and hence are natural disposed to look at the upper left side of the screen. If there experiments were conducted on a subset of population that are used to languages that go from right to left then there could have been different results. Most of the papers have conclude that users tend to ignore important information what is located at the bottom of the page which if below the fold. It could be father investigated that is that information is accompanied with an image of a person then would it attract users or not. While investigating the usability of an interface mostly two types of tasks were used: browsing and searching. This is because it the viewing behaviours of the users change depending on their task. In searching the users try to find a point of entry into a page and then from their he scans the near the point of entry for relevant information. In the heatmap the areas that are red could be the point of entry for those elements of the interface and the yellow and green areas in the heatmap are the surrounding locations where the users try to locate relevant information. Since the search process is majorly influenced by the factors such as, images, color and text. Designers can make use of these factors to guide the searching process of the users A trend was found that larger images attracts more attention as compared to smaller images. This can be used to attract user attention towards information that need immediate attention. Studies suggest that images of people tend to attract more attention. For [2] more prototypes of the web pages could have be formulated and compared to see if that was really true. Heat maps are created using data from several participants and are used to analyze the pattern of fixation on an area on the interface. The findings in [2] are in contrast with the one in [4] where the author has concluded on a dominant F shaped pattern. It can be absorbed what for a text based website with a simple visual hierarchy an F shaped pattern of viewing is more visible but for websites that have a complex visual hierarchy the viewing pattern in more scattered although focusing a lot on the left side if the interface which again is dominated by the users reading style form left to right. Different results will most certainly be produced with users who are habitual in reading from right to left. In general websites with good visual appeal and easy navigation elicit trust worthiness and are major contributing factors towards an enhanced user experience. [5] says that when since images attract attention, can be used to draw users attention to important information below the fold of a page. But the author of [2] contradicts this by saying that even though images of human faces were placed below they fold they attracted very little attention. [5] says that there is no effect of the gender of the image of the face on the website but in [?] notice a lot re spots on the heat map over the images of a female. Also, further studies can be conducted to see male images are more appealing than female image and which gender of the images attract the male users and which gender of the images attract the female users. The analysis of the heat maps performed by [5] was more structured as they used a standardized heatmap. Such a map puts a limit on the number of fixations to be considered as a red zone across different prototypes. Although in [5] the authors conclude that users trust level can be enhanced by the increasing visual appeal it should be noted that visual appeal is not all that matters, functionality of a website also plays a major role. the authors of [5] said that users are attracted toward the area where the images of faces were located but little fixation on the images. This is opposed by [?] where the authors have concluded that generation Y is then to fixate on the images of faces more. Then again the age difference between the participants in [5] was spread out therefore the two papers made contradictory statements. Also, since [5] is making recommendations for a e-commerce website which is mostly used by generation Y they could have narrowed down the are limit of the participants of the experiment. Papers [5] and [2] concluded that images of faces attract more attention but it maybe possible that images of different genre may be more effective. These images when paired with a lowers aesthetic quality webpage may not attract any attention at all. Keeping the ethical issues in mind [],[], and [] did not made the users sign Informed consent form and no information is provided if the participants were briefed or not. [7] suggest that generation Y is more attracted towards images of celebrities. But the study may fail external validity as it has not considered the population of the people who are not familiar with those celebrities. To extend this study a search task could have been given to the users to gain a more indepth understang of likes and dislikes of generation as done ny authorss in [2] and [3]. [7] conducted a research on generation Y but we know that baby boomers are constitute major part of the population that uses the internet. Results form [2], [7] and [5] can be combined to make recommendations for designs that would attract more users and increase user satisfaction. These designs would generally contain more images of faces, important information will be located on top left corner of the screen. To draw attention towards the part of the page below the fold images of celebrities can be used in an effective manner. Most studies concluded that users tend to focus on the left side of the interface but the studies conducted in[8] concluded that older adults ignore the left navigation area. This suggests that younger users who are more familiar with the interface know where to look at for navigation but this lack of knowledge and experience hinder the performance of an older adult. To help out the tease out the age effect designers can do a dual placement where navigation information can be placed in the center and the peripherals of the screen. All the eye tracking studies performed were under a laboratory condition. Here the users are asked to perform task in which they might be interested. These results maybe different in a real world situation when users are performing tasks of their own interest and are aware that the are not being monitored.

Major Health Issues Community Health And Social Care Essay

Major Health Issues Community Health And Social Care Essay The Klinefelters Support Group endeavors to afford the community, doctors and nurses with information about Klinefelters syndrome. It offers resource material, information and support about the syndrome to affected persons and families in Western Australia. This paper aims to outline the concept of community in the context of the Klinefelters Support Group and its related characteristics. A community is not just a group of people bounded by geographical boundaries; it also includes people brought together by religion, lifestyles, hobby and interests among other common interests, goals and concerns. The Klinefelter Support Group members have been brought together by common interests. The author used the community health assessment tool (Clarke, 1992) to collect necessary information related to the chosen community in terms of health status and the surrounding environment. Information from Government and related heath websites were used to verify the number of people affected by relate d health problems around Western Australia. The communitys health problems exhibited by the majority of people within the Klinefelter Support Group were prioritized as Klinefelter Syndrome. The community assessment report focuses on the interests, goals and concerns of the members. Concept of Community The community concept has a wide range of definitions. Bartle (2007) argued that the concept does not necessarily denote a physical location; however, it is demarcated by a group of people who share a common interest (par. 6). A community refers to a group of people who share common characteristics like gender, age, race, religion, culture, place, vulnerability and interests (McMurray, 2007, p. 6). A community may be characterized by one or more of the common characteristics. Bartle (2007) argued that the concept of community accrues from having something in common that is a common interest, place and distinction (par. 19). It is full of conflicts, struggles and factions based on differences in religion, access to wealth, class, educational level, language, ownership of capital, gender and many other factors (Bartle, 2007, par. 46). McMurray (2007) also states that each member of a community influences the other members, sharing knowledge and life skills or simply companionship (p.6) . The definition of community will be the following: a group of people, who share commonalities, who interact with one another and who function as one within a related social structure to address common concerns, as it fits well with the Klinefelter group. How the Klinefelters group acts in accordance with the distinctiveness of chosen concept In this case, the chosen respondents under study fulfill the chosen concept of community by having the following related characteristics; it has twelve members who have the Klinefelter Syndrome or whose relative has the Klinefelter Syndrome. Ten of the target groups are male, two are females, their ages range from 14 to 75 years. Through talking to every individual these people mentioned out that they were affected by the Klinefelter Syndrome and that is the reason why they decided to join the group of their interest. The members are persons with the condition, parents of a child, family member of person with the condition and medical professionals. Most of them outlined the reasons why they go and meet at the Shetland Drive premises as a socializing agent, creating friendship, getting some education on how to take good care of their health. They do all these under supervision of the medical professionals. This community resides in places called Henry Brook WA. However, they meet at Shetland Drive center on Fridays and Saturdays for about 5 hours daily, they do that as to create friendship, share about any challenges regarding their health issues they face when they are at their individual places and sharing on their likes, play games and engage in some exercises under the supervision of medical professionals. Relationship between the major health issues of the community under study and the chosen concept of community. With the assistance of Clarks assessment tool, the author was able to gather all the information related to the communitys major health problems. Surprisingly all the twelve people who were interviewed through the questionnaire suffered from Klinefelter Syndrome or their relatives had the syndrome. However, they outlined that is the reason why they meet together to interact and share their problems. And with the help of health professionals they get some education and related therapies as the health professionals continue holding health promotion to try and alleviate or reduce the health problems they are experiencing. Identifying and justifying preference of the tool used for assessment The researcher used Clarkes assessment tool (1992). The tool fulfills its requirements as it guide in collecting useful information related specific study questions. Beck, (2006), pointed out that health assessment tools are used as they have been tested and proven as reliable, systematic and broad (p. 20). This tool has specific questions relating to the target group, physical and social environments, consumption patterns, occupation, leisure pursuits and health services. Methodology Quantitative and Qualitative methods and data collection The researcher used Klinefelter articles and pamphlets, which were at Shetland drive to acquire some qualitative information about the aim of that community. However, data that was more detailed was collected from each individual related to their own health status. Clarkes tool, (1992) was used as an open-ended questionnaire to collect all the subjective information relating to the members. Moreover, the researcher used objective data to add on the data. Quantitative data from Australian Bureau of statistics and Australian government were used to verify the number of people affected by the Klinefelter Syndrome. Verification of Subjective Data Subjective data was verified through use the community members records kept by the health professionals who supervise them. The records verified all the information as correct. Also responds on above confirmed prevalence of issue, which is associated with persons with the syndrome. RESULTS -COMMUNITY ASSESSMENT DATA Human biology Description of the chosen Community using Epidemiological data; According to Bojesen Gravholt (2009, p. 624) Table: 1 Henley Brook Population Profile Total population of Henley Brook 3953 100% Population of 65 and over 6 0.52% In 2009, 0.52 % of the entire population had the Klinefelter Syndrome. The results show that out of every 650 men, one man had the syndrome. Physical Environment Klinefelters Support Group is located in Henley Brook, Western Australia. It is surrounded by residential buildings and situated at 14 Shetland Drive. All the community members live in different places in Western Australia such as Bunbury, Fremantle, Mandurah, Perth and Geraldton. Psychological Environment Psychological environment has been defined as the interrelation between the environments and human behavior ((Issel, 2004, p. 77). Through using Clark, 1992 tool, and the author has found that nearly every member of the understudy community stated that, they suffer from Klinefelter Syndrome. Moreover, members of the community mention that, it is the reason why they choose to join Klinefelters Support Group. They said that the group provides them with appropriate and comfortable place to relax and socialize as a way of avoiding and reducing stresses they face in their day-to-day lives as they share with people who have been affected by the same condition. It was noted through the clients medical records that all of them were under the syndrome medication. The condition was prevalent in people of all ages from young people of 14 years to middle aged people to old people. The male demonstrated breast enlargement, testicular failure and inability to produce sperms. Most of them were depr essed when alone and they argued. The syndrome was a basis of much personal anguish, unceasing morbidity and financial costs. According to Frisch Frisch (2009), in addition to biological determinants, the quality of familial and marital relationships and other social support networks also play important roles in the occurrence and outcome of the syndrome (, p. 4). Social Environment There is a lot of support from the counselors. Infertility counseling is accessible for men coming to terms with barrenness and the way it affect them and their partners. Some of the middle-aged men had lost their spouses since they could not make them. They stated that they feel so lonely and socially isolated when they are in their own homes without the spouses. Those with children who had the condition were scared because their children would go through the same fate. They only tend to socialize and learn new things from each other through meeting at their community center. However, they were all educated and had good jobs before they joined Klinefelters Support Group. They did not have any other problems but viewed the syndrome as a major problem. The members of the community understudy stated that they depend on their salary, benefits, savings as well as some government benefits from Centre link to support their daily needs. Consumption The members of the community stated that they usually try to eat healthy and balanced diet and revealed that they take some medications to boost their hormones. They said that adults and teenager are mostly driven to suicide by the syndrome because they do not know how to cope with the symptoms. Since the group started, none of the community members has committed suicide or given up on life. The community mentioned out that they really like to do some exercises and socialize that are the reasons they belong to Klinefelters Group. The group is fully equipped with medical experts to help the community fulfill their goals. None of the community members complained about any after effects from doing exercises. Occupation Some of the group members are teenagers and are still in schools. Their parents however work and provide for all their needs and thus considered by the group. The middle aged affected by the disease worked whereas some of the members are already retired. Most of them mentioned that they were involved in volunteer work. (Personal contact 25 April 2011) Leisure Pursuits Klinefelters Support Group is close to numerous recreational places and apparently, the community members did mention that they occasionally spend their time relaxing and talking with the other members and health professionals. The health professionals verified that, they do visit certain parks to play games, and engage in some simple exercises as to promote individuals wellbeing, form friendships and enhance their self-perception. Moreover, most of the community members regarded telling stories as their constant leisure activity. (Personal contact 25 April 2011). Health Services The community has easy access to health care services. The members attend different hospitals in their localities. However, the community does have a group of health professionals as been stated earlier, which include the health professionals such as doctors and nurses to help with day-to-day health issues. The community mentioned that they normally fund their health care although they had been soliciting for funds from the ministry of health. Moreover, the community members stated that they get some prescribed medications at a reduced price. The PBS (Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme) schedule states that the holders of a pensioner card and seniors health card are authorized to receive subsided medications at low price (Australian department of health in aging, 2010). Community perception of health One of the members of the community stated that, he feels much better since he joined Klinefelters Support Group. He mentioned out that, he had been so lonely before with no one to talk to, and share his health problems with before he joined the group (Mr. M. personal contact on 25 April 2011). Moreover, other members of the community stated that, they have improved so much in the level of knowledge about their health conditions and how well to take control. For example, they mentioned out that they now know more about the syndrome that they initially did before they joined the group. They even went on to say that, they have come up with certain strategies to overcome stressful situations and move on. Most of the members in this community showed that they have optimistic minds towards their condition. They told the researcher that they are very keen to understand more about their health problems and the way to manage and deal with syndrome. All the members mentioned that they do enjo y each others company, participating in all therapeutic programs such as hand therapies and games, Garden activity. Most of them mentioned that the activities they carried out in the center assist in enhancing memory skills, improving health and assist them in living a stress free life. (Personal contact on 25 April 2011). Excessively, all the members stated that they feel much better now since they joined the Klinefelters Support Group. They rated their health as individually 6/10, 7/10, 9/10, and 8/10. ANALYSIS OF DATA According to Community data, one of the strength of the community is easy access to the health services in main areas of the city. The community can access the Primary Health care services easily. The community benefits by getting prevention of certain diseases that comes with the syndrome, early diagnosis and treatment of some of those diseases. Moreover, community benefit from various recreational places as it offers them with a conducive place to meet and relax. Thus, it is also strength as the community benefit from this local government belonging as they can access social network. Every feature above is a benefit to the lives of people living Western Australia and the community under study in one way or the other. Of the twelve community members, three mentioned that they were employees of one of the above-mentioned organizations or features. Thus, it is strength to the community as there is provision of jobs within the City. Moreover, there is community networking and it is str ength as the members mentioned that they contact one another in case if one of them is in trouble, or is having coping problems. The members have access to Internet and telephone networks from their homes, which enable them to interact frequently. Application of Social Determinants of health This is the interpretation and analysis the above community assessment data to find out how social determinants influences on communitys health. Immigrants health needs are very complex and wide-ranging, especially given the diversity in background socioeconomic status, ethnicity, geography and culture. Social determinants of health are the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, including the health system (Chapman et. al, 2008, p. 68). The social determinants of health are mostly responsible for health inequities and they include the social gradient, housing, education, work, unemployment, social support, health services, food and transport (Chapman et. al, 2008, p. 160) The researcher is going to explain how social determinants are influencing the communitys health. The community understudy mentioned that some of them are in schools; others are employed while some have already retired and now enjoying their superannuation benefits and some center link benefits. Thos e employed mentioned that they earn good household income ranging from $2000 to $3000 weekly. They mentioned that they could eat good balanced diet but they were lonely and socially isolated which contributed other health issues such as depression, stress and even suicidal thoughts etc. This shows how social gradient has influence on the communities health. The members also stated they own their own accommodation such as houses, thus there is no poverty and there is less spread of communicable diseases within the members. Moreover, education is another social determinant of health found in this community, however, the community holds high educational qualifications, which are represented by the knowledge, and understanding of their own problems and knowing how to overcome them. In addition, the locality has a lot of schools and Universities showing the availability and easy access of education in the community. Many social support networks are available for the community and they re ally support and recommend Klinefelters Support Group, where the members create friendships, socialize and share their problems. Thus, this enables reduction in the levels of life stresses, which causes suicidal thought, depression and stress. Moreover, many health services from hospitals are also available nearby and thus enable the community to get medication and to be attended to and diagnosed early in case of any emergency of health problem. The community is very aware of preventative measures of health for example by making use of particular medications that have to do with the syndrome. Lastly, easy access to transport helps the community to get wherever they need to be on time. For instance, medical centers and it really saves peoples lives and further health complications as the community will be able to reach to related places on time. According to the demography and subjective data, the physical environment of the locality notably their road infrastructures, dwellings, com munity services and facilities are adequate and modern to support its consumers. These infrastructures and accommodation are very much important to keep their social life fit and healthy. Their high socioeconomic status due to employment, high educational level and diverse backgrounds may influence their consumption patterns. They maintain basic living standards but when they have special health care needs, such as specialist treatment services or elective surgery, which are excluded from Medicare or schedule surgery, which most of them can afford. In addition, social exclusion resulting from the condition could prevent the members from participating in education or training and gaining access to health services and other activities, which could be socially and psychologically damaging and harmful to health (Wilkinson Marmont, 2003, p. 16). The transport services, Internet facilities and telecommunication are sufficient according to their needs. Application of primary healthcare principles in the community Primary health care has been explained as the initial care to the problem (McMurray, 2007, p. 41). The main aim of this care is to provide and improve initial health for the community and the whole society at large (McMurray, 2007, p. 41). Primary health care includes principals such as equity, appropriate technology, accessibility, intersectional collaboration, increased emphasis on health support, public contribution, and empowerment (McMurray, 2007). The researcher is going to apply these health care principles to the community understudy. Equity The community understudy does not choose on who should join the group, but it is a program for all the residents of Western Australia who suffer from the Klinefelters condition. It does provide many services to its members, such as exercises, dancing, hand therapy, games and health education on how to cope with life. It provides equal distribution of care to all the members regardless of race, age, language and functional capacity (McMurray, 2007, p. 37). The community provides transportation and free medication. Appropriate technology The main aim of technology is to improve the health status of the community. The community has an intranet database system in which all the health professionals keep information about the patients. In addition, the community members information is all collected and imputed into the communitys computer system. Moreover, all the community members have access to mobile phones and Internet at their homes for communication purposes with their families, community members and their health professionals for any appointments and arrangements. The community has big television and radio to ensure the community is up to date with what is happening in the world and to provide relaxing music to the stressed ones. In addition, the health professionals make use of stethoscopes, and other medical equipments need to check members vital signs if required. McMurray (2007, p. 38) mentioned out that although technological advances have helped health status improves over the years. Issues such as abortion, IVF and organ harvesting have raised serious ethical questions (McMurray, 2007, p. 38). Accessibility McMurray (2007) stresses the importance of equal access of all people to health services in helping eliminate disadvantage (p. 37). Health opportunities should be available to all despite their ethnic, financial and geographical status. The weakness of this community is that members fund their own hospital expenses and the group does not offer much help because of limited resources, members normally fund the group to keep it going. However, the community center is situated at a central point such that its members will be able to access it easily. The community center caters for the health care professionals who ask for very small salaries in order to assist the community cope well with the syndrome. Intersectoral Collaboration This involves the cooperation of different service providers to provide the needs of the community (McMurray, 2007, p. 88). In the community understudy, intersectoral collaboration is established by the availability and cooperation of doctors and nurses from different hospitals and who assist in providing related care to the members. The community has got other staff members DSW (disability worker supporter) who do work in the kitchen to provide meals for the members during their meeting times, clerks, and administration personal. These also work in hand with the all the above-mentioned health professionals to provide the required essential care. Increased emphasis on health promotion This refers to the process of allowing people to acquire more control and boost their healthiness (WHO, as cited in McMurray, 2007, p. 39). McMurray, (2007) also states that health promotion empowers people to take charge and boost their own healthiness and is vital for health professionals (p.39). Health professionals fully involve clients in their health care by continuously educating them on their medical conditions and how well to continue taking good care of them self. In the community center, many various pamphlets and articles cover education on the Klinefelters condition such as hand washing, immunizations, The health professionals under supervision mentioned out that, they do present on a certain health topic and its management each week. Public Participation According to McMurray (2007), public empowerment is the key to public participation (p 44). The community demonstrates good public participation, as the members have been able to recognize that for their health to improve, they are supposed to change their lifestyle patterns and adhere to their day therapies. An example of public participation to this community was, most of members were contributing to some questions asked by the health professionals relating to what actions to take when feeling stressed. Empowerment Empowerment has been described as social action, which includes education of the community to a sense of ownership and how well to take control of their health problems as to ensure better, and improved health (McMurray, 2007, p. 2). Community members are motivated by the education, health promotions, exercises, games they receive from the health professionals to help them develop their health. Affordability The community mentioned out that they fund their health care but they have been soliciting for help from health department care, which would make it easier for them to afford and access the health care they need. Nevertheless, on top of that, the members are asked to pay a certain amount of money every month to Klinefelters Support Group, which they stated that it was quite sensible and affordable. Brief Conclusion of the data importance Excessively, the collected data showed that, the community under study involves twelve people who suffer from the Klinefelters condition. However, the data reveals that the syndrome affects people of all ages and thus the community group has students who suffer from the syndrome, their parents, middle-aged men and health care professionals. The data shows that the syndrome and stress that come with it are the most significant health issue in this community. According to the community members data, the main aim they joined this community is to enhance socialization, exercises, create friendship, sharing ideas and success education from the related health professionals at the community. Health/ Social Issues Health/Nursing Issues The health assessment of the chosen community indicates most of the members in this community have confidence in their health status although they have the same medical condition. The most significant medical condition is the stress and depression that comes with how the sufferers are treated by their spouses. The typical lifestyles of majority of them are good which is different to the same age groups (65% reported to have any form of exercise) that appear in the National Health Survey (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2007-08). Potential problem of failing to take medications in adults and children was related to the fact that some of the members give up on life before they even take medications. Adults and children delaying their medication related to lack of proper psychological treatment, not enough communication and collaboration between different sectors involved in health service delivery, not enough health education for immigrants. Potential risk of nutritional deficiencies among the community members evidenced by their food and nutrition habits, also prevalence of anemia and Vitamin D deficiency. High level of stress related to concern about the condition, isolation, personal and community safety and traumatic experiences upon discovering that one has a condition and may not get better. Social isolation especially for men related to their lack of ability to have children, lifestyle differences and chosen sedentary lifestyle that may affect their psychological and physical health status in the long term. NURSING PLAN FOR HIGHEST PRIORITY ISSUE According to data analysis and community assessment, the Klinefelters condition is chosen as the highest priority health issue for the community understudy. Men suffering from this condition have a high rate of being associated with affective disorder such as depression. The author determined objectives to find out the modifiable risk factors and the appropriate interventions to prevent community from further complications from life stresses and depression. Nursing Problem: Depression related to feelings of worthlessness, failure of interaction, lack of positive feedback as manifested by withdrawal from social isolation, expression of feelings of loneliness. Expected Outcomes The community member will have desire to live and lists several reasons for wanting to live. The community initiates social interactions with peers and health professionals: Should verbalize satisfaction with social interactions: I really enjoyed our conversation. Individuals will demonstrate effective copying strategies. INTERVENTIONS Liaise the community members with other multidisciplinary teams, support groups, or community based services and programs. For example, if the community needs special social support, liaise with the appropriate social or indigenous community services. The social service will assist the member to learn new coping methods such as psychosocial and problem solving techniques. Empower the community to have enough knowledge about risky behaviors on being socially isolated with no interactions with other people in the community or families. Assist in offering health education about risk factors by means of pamphlets, through local communication networks or counseling. Emphasize public participation by way of group involvement for example psychosocial therapies, outings, activities organized by the community board or local governments. Help the community individual to list their problems from maximum to minimum urgent and assist them to find immediate solutions for most troubling problems, postpone those that can wait, delegate some significant others and knowledge those beyond the individuals control. Hold some health promotion specifically relating to depression and should include health education with such issues as, self-care to those with self-care deficit and ensure that there is use of visual and audio technologies or even pamphlets. Rationales Learning new coping methods from related multidisciplinary team for example social support service can help in problem solving and getting involved in community programs which will help the individuals to manage internal and external stressors successfully (Fortinash Holoday-Worret, 1991, p. 5) This will enable the individuals to demonstrate that feeling of empowerment and to have much knowledge about their goals (McMurray, 2007, p. 304) Group involvement will make the individuals to gain support from others and will learn social skills vicariously and will be able to see that his/her problems and concerns are similar to those of others (Clark, 2009, p. 23) Listing problems in priority helps to reduce their overwhelming effects and breaks them into more manageable increments (Fortinash Holoday-Worret, 1991, p. 5) Health promotions will make it easier for the health professionals in terms of conveying the message to individuals and even they will tend to understand more since there will be use pamphlets, projectors etc. (Clark, 2003, p. 46) Evaluations A feedback will be taken from the community on whether their expected outcomes were met and this can be achieved within a survey from the community. By getting feedback from the community services, programs or multidisciplinary teams whether the community worked with them and remain if they were actually cooperating with them to get expected outcomes or not. Over qualitative data from the personal interviewing with the patients from the community, evaluate the perception of community towards the whole varieties of therapies provided at the day care Centre. By assessing the communities depression level through taking mini mental state examination and compare the results from the ones they had before they joined the day care therapy. Nursing interventions: Nursing intervention Rationale Encourage the group members to take part in social activities. Participation in social activities can provide the opportunities to a person to meet new friends. Moreover, people are more likely to share his or her feelings and receive supports from others with similar problems (Hinchliff, Norman Schober, 1993, p. 53). Encourage expression of feelings and needs